While I can see that the PLO, Egypt, Jordan, and "Saudi-Arabia" would be willing to sign a peace treaty, I don't see Libya and Syria joining soon.

Iran won't like it. And Iran is probably the reason for the Arabs to talk peace suddenly.

This is potentially big:

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE54921D20090511?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews

Jordan's King Abdullah offers:

"We are offering a third of the world to meet them with open arms," the king said. "The future is not the Jordan River or the Golan Heights or the Sinai, the future is Morocco in the Atlantic and Indonesia in the Pacific. That is the prize."

However, he also threatens war:

But he warned: "If we delay our peace negotiations, then there is going to be another conflict between Arabs or Muslims and Israel in the next 12-18 months."

As I said before, I don't know how Obama did it. But this is huge. The PLO are apparently sick and tired of Hamas and Syria and Jordan and Saudi-Arabia are looking for a way to survive. If the Arab world's big parties storm forward, the smaller states will have to follow or get left behind. This is very obviously directed against Syria, which together with Libya will be the small anti-peace camp, allowing Jordan and Saudi-Arabia to win influence in both the Muslim world and the west.

George Bush was the first President to speak of a "Palestinian" state. Maybe Obama was smarter. Bush offered them a state (and that wasn't his to offer), Obama apparently didn't offer but demanded.

(However, without the surrender of Saddam's Iraq this could not have been possible. The PLO only caved in and lost to Hamas because their last rich supporter vanished.)

If this was Obama's doing and there will be peace and settlement of Arabs in Arab countries AND Jerusalem remains Jewish, I'll officially admit that Obama is the man.

I have no ideological attachment to George Bush, only to Israel and peace.

The Times said that, as incentives to Israel to freeze the building of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, Arab states may offer to let the Israeli airline El Al fly through Arab air space and grant visas for Israelis.

Unbelievable!

This is not only the first time ever the Arabs actually OFFER something instead of just DEMANDING, but it is even something of value.

And what's even more interesting is that this time they are not demanding the removal of all Jews from the West Bank, they merely request, for a price, that no more Jews move there.

Soon we will live in a world where a Jew can settle anywhere he wants.

(I wish I could be less sarcastic in the face of genuinely good news!)

Holy crap! Where did all this come from and why haven't I read any of this!?!

In all honesty, the Canadian media hasn't reported ANYTHING on Israel in the last week to my recollection, let alone major peace overtures by Arab states. If this is for real, then holy crap.

The mention of 12-18 months before another conflict between "Arabs or Muslims and Israel" is interesting. In fact, that seems remarkably optimistic.

Leauki, what do you recommend so far as news sources to keep track of these events, since my local newspaper is obviously more focused on local and national events than world news?

Interesting. I can see a pragmatic advantage in having Jerusalem an international city, but I doubt the UN is capable of ruling a village, let alone a large city with a populace that enjoys fighting each other and a heap of 'inspired' religious tourists. It smacks of the Tom Clancy solution (in his books they hired Swiss mercenaries to do the job).

It would be better to have Jerusalem a city-state with a widely agreed constitution if it had to be independent of Israel. Israel doesn't seem to be doing too bad a job with the city though. It may just be my abysmal memory/interest, but I can't remember the last real social conflict in Jerusalem. The Wall seems to get the focus these days.

I don't care how many religions declare Jerusalem their holy city. Jerusalem is and will remain Jewish.

Jerusalem can be an international city when Rome and Mecca become international cities.

For news about Israel and the middle east nothing beats these sites:

http://www.israellycool.com/

http://www.ynetnews.com

http://www.n-tv.de/

First is an Israeli blog, second is an Israeli news site. The third is the (German) Web site of the German version of CNN.

Plus I have my own sources, simply people I know in Israel, Kurdistan, Somaliland, Egypt etc.

I've got to admit, the blog is entertaining! Very snarky, I like it!

Rome (or the religious bits anyway) is an international city. Mecca is unlikely, considering a basic law is that you have to be Muslim to even enter it. But so long as you're a Muslim, you can enter it any time. Border control around Ramadan is always rather lax.

If an international Jerusalem is the price of lasting peace in the Middle East, Israel seems a bit irascible to refuse it, considering for much of human history it hasn't been in their possession. After all, Israel surrounds Jerusalem - Israel will dominate trade, they'll dominate Jerusalese culture, they'll probably dominate its political structure or wield enormous influence on it - having the title to it should be the kind of pride-based asset the country doesn't really need.

Indonesia learnt that lesson ten years ago when they let East Timor go. They currently dominate trade with the independent state despite having previously slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people and engendering heaps of hate. Comparatively I think Israel could come out of an internationalised holy city state quite well. If that's still an unthinkable act of charity, Vaticanise just the holy sites under an inter-religious triumvirate.

Rome is NOT an international city. It's about as open to tourists as Jerusalem is.

I don't care about Muslim basic laws. If they make demands, so can we. (There is a basic Jewish law that says that Jerusalem must be Jewish, so there; let's respect both Islam and Judaism here and I am fine with it.)

You want to ask a Bahai or Israeli Druze how easy it is to get into Mecca?

He has a point, though. Hypothetically speaking, if turning Jerusalem (or even just the holy sites) into an independent political entity was the price of peace in the middle east, would that not be an acceptable tradeoff?

Of course, we all know that that'd never be the case.... it would not be the only demand nor would it actually result in peace, but at least on a theoretical level "Jerusalem at any price" is an insane political position.

That was done in 1948. And the Arabs attacked and invaded it. Israel then took the western half. The Jewish quarters in the eastern half were bombarded (for no particular reason, the religious Jews living there were not fighting or even Zionists) and the Jews were driven out.

For 2000 years Jews have been praying for a return to Jerusalem. It is hard to explain what the city means to Jews.

And I won't accept a solution that ultimately legalises taking the city away from Jews. There has to be a point that cannot be crossed.

The peoples of the world have slaughtered the Jews, imprisoned them, dispersed them, attacked and murdered them whenever they felt like it, destroyed the Temple so that only one wall remained, but they WILL NOT and they MUST NOT take Jerusalem (and that remaining piece of the wall) again.

If Jerusalem becomes an "international city", it will ultimately be ruled by Christians and Muslims because they are what "international" is. It would take less than a month for the first law against Jews living in Jerusalem would appear and ten years later the city would be Jew-free again. (How do I know this? Because that is what happened the last time Jerusalem was made an international city. Except I am being optimistic. In 1948 it took less then a week for both things to happen. But we have learned so much since then.)

Did you know that the Palestinian Authority has a death penalty for people who sell property to Jews? What do you think will happen in Jerusalem if the UN rule it, the same UN in which the Arab nation has 22 votes and the Jews have one?

The insane political position, I think, is to give up and give up and hope that the enemy will finally agree to be nice.

That has never worked for Jews. It's an insane political position to believe that giving up Jerusalem will do anything for peace. The worst persecutions of Jews in the Muslim and later the Arab world happened when Jerusalem was under Muslim or Arab control.

Albert Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. And ironically, the university he founded in what was then international Jerusalem (Hebrew University) was also overrun by the Arabs.

Okay, this is clearly your irrational trigger issue, so let's just agree to disagree.

I was speaking strictly in hypotheticals. I'm well aware that the practical possibility of that actually guaranteeing any sort of peace or justice is basically nill.

But in a (strictly imaginary) world in which giving up Jerusalem meant that no more Arab states would declare war, no more rockets would be sent into Israeli kindergartens, and all that could be guaranteed in the long term... yeah, the terms of the question are pretty much impossible, but if giving up control of a single city when doing so would achieve every other possible objective you might hope for is completely and utterly off the table, no matter what is offered on the other side...

...well, it doesn't strike me as particularly pragmatic.

Yeah, I get that in the real world that'd never happen, and it'd never work. My point was that the theoretical value of this one city, no matter the religious significance, shouldn't be infinite. Sure, the asking price could be well beyond what anyone is prepared to offer in the real world, but surely there is SOME combination of terms that Israel could accept.

Yes, the treatment of minorities in the Arab world is some sort of weird fantasy. Let's agree to disagree about it.

Who cares about those people anyway.

Yes, I agree with you; as did the Zionists in 1948 when they indeed did give up Jerusalem, despite the fact that it was (and had been for a long time) a Jewish majority city. But they give it up for a guarantee of peace.

It didn't work.

The Zionists gave up Judaism's most precious possession for the only thing that is worth more to Judaism than the Temple, peace.

And it totally failed.

The PLO and Hamas have stated their goal so often, it's ridiculous to argue that a "compromise" must be found. What's a "compromise" between Israel's existance and "throwing the Jews into the sea"? Three million dead Jews?